


Signifying Nothing (story inspired by mific's "They Understand Me There")

by exbex



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Gen, Heterosexual Character, Light BDSM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exbex/pseuds/exbex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darren Nichols, de-constructed.  A different take on "I might go to Berlin; they understand me there."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signifying Nothing (story inspired by mific's "They Understand Me There")

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [They Understand Me There](https://archiveofourown.org/works/525657) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific). 



> Even I didn't see this (possibly radical) character interpretation coming.
> 
> Special thanks to my very generous beta.
> 
> Author is not a BDSM expert. Please be patient with her.

“How does someone love ‘not wisely, but too well’ if goes from being head over heels to wanting to kill his lover? It’d make more sense if he went through with killing himself.” 

Geoffrey is hanging upside-down from the top bunk, his hands hanging casually above, or below, as it were, his head. It’s oddly distracting.

Darren rolls his eyes and sighs. “He’s not talking about Desdemona, he’s talking about Iago.”

“Othello loved Iago ‘not wisely, but too well’? You’re one of those who thinks Iago was in love with Othello?”

Geoffrey is insufferable, one of those who focuses on only the words, on what Shakespeare wrote instead of what he didn’t write, who thinks that there’s only one interpretation even though stage directions are scant.

“No Geoffrey,” Darren sighs and tosses his copy of All’s Well That Ends Well aside. “I mean he’s talking about his platonic love for his friend Iago, a man he trusted implicitly and who fucked him over royally.”

Geoffrey bites his lower lip and tugs idly at his right ear with a thumb and forefinger. “Hmm…that’s interesting, but it takes some of the romance out of it, don’t you think?”

Darren snorts. “Romance? It’s a tragedy; the stage is littered with bodies by the end of the final Act.”

Geoffrey slides off the top bunk, reaching for the bottom mattress and awkwardly, unceremoniously transfers from one bed to the other, limbs askew, until he’s sprawled facedown, one side of his head buried in the pillow. Darren cocks his head, interested, and wonders, not for the first time, if he really is gay after all. It still doesn’t make sense;  
Geoffrey is the most cavalier person he’s ever met, completely lacking in self-consciousness about his own body and nudity. Darren’s seen enough that he should know if Geoffrey’s penis is infinitely more interesting than his own.

“The sword-fighting scene is killing me,” Geoffrey groaned. “If Mercutio wasn’t such a poet I wouldn’t torture myself with it.”

Darren rolls his eyes. Geoffrey is the most physical person he’s ever seen; playing Mercutio will probably be the greatest moment of his entire existence.

“Good roommates give massages,” Geoffrey mumbles into his pillow.

Darren hesitates for a moment, then shrugs, even though Geoffrey can’t see him from his position. There’s nothing sexual about the request; Geoffrey is both decidedly heterosexual and so immersed in the theater that his entire headspace is preoccupied with playing Mercutio. It’s why he’s so sore after only a few rehearsals.

Darren throws a leg over and settles himself on Geoffrey’s hips. This is where he should know if he’s gay. Geoffrey is perfectly symmetrical, muscles well-defined, no fat on his body. Darren doesn’t feel a thing, except he’s fascinated by the fact that Geoffrey just lets him touch him, manipulate his muscles, puts himself in a completely defenseless position.

**

Geoffrey has his heart effectively broken by one dark-haired beauty after another, most of them ingénues, most of them Darren will later, secretly term “pre-Ellen Ellens.” 

“I’ve lost another Juliet,” Geoffrey groans in a half-drunken stupor one evening during the summer term as Darren hauls him unceremoniously to their room, “I’ve lost another Cleopatra.”

“They’re all Rosalines, Geoffrey,” Darren huffs with an eye-roll that Geoffrey can’t see because he’s been dumped to lay face-down on his bed. Darren does have the tact to restrain himself from pointing out that they’re all Katarinas, in a way, since Geoffrey’s real love is the theater, and considers all of his girlfriends in need of some kind of molding, to better appreciate their craft, to be more refined. While still being passionate, Geoffrey would surely explain, as if everything that’s wrong with the world and with humanity could be fixed with a little theater.

Geoffrey manages to push himself off the bed and he gives Darren a bleary-eyed look, opening his mouth as if to retort, but apparently can’t find the words, leaving the effect of a lazily gasping fish, if such a thing could be imagined.

“You’re a good friend,” Geoffrey suddenly slurs and throws his arms around Darren, burying his face in Darren’s chest, his arms slung sloppily over Darren’s shoulders. It’s completely unexpected, and the most uncomfortable thing that has happened to him in recent memory. Darren doesn’t know if he’s gay or straight. He thinks bodies are like interesting works of art, and he’d study medicine if the sight of blood didn’t make him feel like fainting and vomiting. He doesn’t even know how he feels about touching, much, except that he needs to know that it’s coming and it needs to be nonsexual. He knows Geoffrey doesn’t mean any harm, but he’s inadvertently only covered fifty percent of Darren’s “rules,” and it’s all the more strange because for all the verbal banter and sharing a room and being pretty comfortable even being naked in front of one another, Geoffrey has never been terribly tactile. He’s not even that tactile with the people he dates, not publicly, anyway.

Darren grasps Geoffrey’s forearms and pushes, sending Geoffrey to lie on his back in the mess of bedclothes. Darren finds that he’s encircled Geoffrey’s wrists with his hands, and finds that he likes the feel of Geoffrey’s pulse. As usual, he’s just left confused. Geoffrey, on the other hand, simply looks content, his eyelids fluttering closed. In a minute or two, he’s snoring, oblivious.

**  
Darren knows, on an intellectual level, that he shouldn’t resent Geoffrey Tennant for the very thing that makes him Geoffrey. But he’ll maintain, childishly, that Geoffrey started it all. It’s all fine and well for Geoffrey to see the romantic in everything, to wrap himself up in theater as if it’s a coat that can protect him from the world’s harshness.

It wouldn’t be something to divide them if this coat that Geoffrey constructed were impenetrable. But that’s the problem with Geoffrey Tennant; anyone who doesn’t respect the art is breaching the fortress. There’s nothing wrong with Darren’s interpretation of The Tempest. Geoffrey and everyone else can focus on the enchantment and romance of the play, but if Darren’s truly the only one who thinks that the closest thing the real world has to a to a control-freak, enslaving magician orchestrating the events of an island is a charming, brutal, dictatorial, genocidal murderer, then the rest of the world must be completely mad. 

As much as he blames Geoffrey, Darren can’t actually pinpoint the moment that everything went to hell, that he went from being an enthusiastic thespian to being discontent with the whole process. It just seems completely irrelevant to everything else going on in the world. He tries switching studies, tries his hands at things that seem more relevant: social work, international law, even education, but he’s too eccentric, for one, and nothing seems to help. He’s unconventional in his interpretations, he knows. He’d be better suited to the visual arts: abstraction is welcome in sculpting and painting, and there are fewer people to whine and stomp their feet and declare that he’s wrong. Theater folk are dictatorial, declaring their visions to be inerrant, even if their playwrights are centuries dead. Darren is stuck though; he doesn’t have the eye or the hands for the visual arts. 

Besides, he’s one of those dictatorial thespians himself; it’s just that his interpretations aren’t popular. He begins to hate the theater. Why doesn’t anyone understand that they are all just poor players, strutting and fretting upon the stage?

**

Something really is rotten in the state of Denmark. Darren has always maintained that Hamlet is a terrible play, not in its artistry, but in that depressing way it has of pointing out the utter stupidity of the human race.

Later he will realize that perhaps he would have gotten his cast on his side, just a little, if he’d perhaps been honest them. Or maybe they would just have pitied him. But there is the tiniest possibly that they might have begun to understand the truth: that it was Darren who felt as if he was rotting from the inside out.

It’s not fair to make the cast pay though. For the first time in his life, Darren considers leaving the theater. Geoffrey Tennant can make magic out of words alone, after years institutionalized. Darren isn’t sure that he can do anything.

**

It’s not his first munch, or his first negotiation. Darren’s attempts at dating had always been disastrous. One of his unfortunate dates, one of the more patient ones, had suggested that Darren try a munch; try the lifestyle.

It had gone as well as could be expected, that first time at his first play party. He didn’t have enough patience with paperwork to fill out the long form, but his partner was experienced and matter-of-fact. He wasn’t surprised to discover that he’s a dom, that he likes bondage, that he’s not picky about the gender of his partners, and that he wants nonsexual play. It’s still awkward, and difficult. He has to safeword out of the scene. Marcus is experienced though, and patient. He’s the one who suggests Club Berlin. “I know it might seem counter-intuitive, but sometimes it’s easier in front of more people.”

Darren has more patience with the forms this time. Playing in front of other people is not only easier, it’s better. Darren realizes that he should have known; this isn’t the theater, but he’s performing, and for the first time in years he actually enjoys it. It’s still tricky, at first, but he gets better with practice. He’s good with the bondage and the leash and collar. He can direct his subs, get them into a subspace, give them what they want, what they need.

**

Geoffrey Tennant is a fine enough actor, Darren will give him that. He is not the condescending bastard that Darren thought he was, an admission that Darren makes grudgingly, but he has never respected Geoffrey more or perhaps disliked him less than he does at this moment, because in spite of much evidence to the contrary, Geoffrey is not a manipulator. Darren can’t articulate how he knows that Geoffrey is being blatant without being straightforward, but he knows, deeply and irrevocably, that Geoffrey’s willingness to engage in a sort of spectacle was not intended to be insulting, but was Geoffrey’s own peculiar way of burying the proverbial hatchet.

It’s true, that he’s forgotten the sensuality of the play, that he’s forgotten the value of such sensuality. He’s forgotten the most basic truth that he learned in Berlin, not to confuse the sensual with the sexual, as if the two are inextricable from one another. Indeed, Darren will never quite understand the way his leads look at one another, but he can understand how the lines get them there.

It pays off. The audience is enraptured by a play about two foolish teenagers in love and how their moronic families ruined everything. It’s nearly impossible to set his cynicism aside, but Darren manages it, somehow. It’s a difficult blow, watching the play on the backstage monitors with the realization that the actors don’t really need him. Of course, even Geoffrey would likely argue with him: the actors always need their director, even if their director has nearly sucked all the life out of their play, costuming his leads’ bodies, particularly their genitals, in cages, signifying a bizarre projection of his own confusion about his asexuality.

Darren buries his head in his hands and lets out a muffled groan and a short, barking laugh. Maria shoots him a worried look, but he waves his hand. “It’s nothing, really.”

Darren spends long moments looking at the photograph that Geoffrey gave him. He fights against the admission but relents eventually. New Burbage weighs him down, not only because of their desperate need to be so conventional in theater, but because of Geoffrey. It scares him, what happened to Geoffrey. It could have easily been him. Really, it probably should have. If a pool had gone on back in their impromptu sword-fighting days, then surely the money would have been on Darren Nichols going mad.

**

Geoffrey Tennant is the last person alive that Darren would predict running into at a munch, but it seems to be his destiny to cross paths with the man, to be re-routed back to New Burbage with exceeding regularity.

If it were any other actor, Darren would assume he or she was traipsing about some place they didn’t belong in order to “research”. But this is Geoffrey, who doesn’t have to look beyond the dialogue to be inspired. He’s not here because of theater, and Darren knows, somehow, that he’s not here to figure out a way to get off: the look in his eyes is all too familiar.

“I should be more surprised than I am,” Geoffrey finally says minutes after they’ve locked eyes and made their way to one another. Darren has found them a quiet corner to sit in, a low buzz of conversation emanating around them.

“There’s a reason you’re talking to me now instead of walking out the door.” They’ve known one another for too many years not to be blunt.

“I feel like I’m losing my mind-again,” Geoffrey is un-dramatically frank.

“No need to worry,” Darren tuts. “There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“And is this kind of thing your slice of heaven?”

“Not exactly. Just an escape from the sound and the fury, nothing more.”

Geoffrey sighs, placing his palms face down on the table. “Look, I’m not gay.”

“I know,” Darren replies. “I’m not gay or straight. It doesn’t matter; it’s not about getting off for everybody, though for others, it is.” He waves a hand to indicate their fellows. “You don’t have to explain. There’s paperwork for well-being reasons, but anything that happens, stays under wraps.”

Darren takes it as a sign that there’s still a hint of their former friendship alive that Geoffrey doesn’t question him or even look remotely skeptical.

**

Darren used to scorn nostalgia, but he can’t help himself now. Geoffrey’s older, a bit softer around the edges, more tired in the eyes, but Darren can see the twenty-year-old in him, particularly the way he adjusts his collar and looks entirely unself-conscious, even scantily clad as he is.

“Don’t worry,” Darren catches the nervous look in Geoffrey’s eyes and tries for a smirk that doesn’t quite make it. “You can trust me.”

Geoffrey raises an eyebrow. “I know, that’s why I’m completely bewildered.” But he squares his shoulders and suddenly the nervousness is gone.

“Alright,” Darren inhales slowly. “On your knees.”


End file.
